I am trying to make a golfers flail, a sorta wooden replica of the left arm and how it works during the stroke. A couple of hinge pins and a swivel joint seems too much for me to make a skeleton for. When I used anim8tor before I got maya, the parts didn't warp or deform or move in a nonsensical fashion away from the joint...etc, the part you joined moved strictly and precisely around the joint of the skeleton when rotated. I really need to be able to stop this! Im building the skeleton- lining up carefully with the joint tool and then using 'parent' from the constrain menu to join them but once I try moving the skeleton weird things start happening.

Where am I going wrong?, I know the answer must be simple but this one thing could help me make a lot of things I want to make.....

im not to sure what you mean but have you tried looking at the pain skin weights tool, it lets you influence what part of the geometry is influenced by all the joints, you might have a few vertices influneced by more then one joint leading to your distortion. To get to it, hit F2 then skin, edit smooth skin then paint skin weights tool and make the secion around each joint completely white.
I hope that helps?
mumbo.

Notice that the bit that is parented to the joint becomes smaller in length and also less rectangular as it is rotated up and down. How do you move the object so that it does exactly what the skeleton does ?

The problem is the yellow rectangle you got there. From my guess that rectangle doesn't contain polygons. What i mean is, you just have a rectangle and nothing more. To fix this problem. Go to it's property and boost the number of spans it has. Give it like 10 or 20 and see what happens.

I'm sure this is your problem. Sorry if i didn't put it in better words. I just can't seem to think right today.

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